


Bigger On The Inside

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU I suppose, Angst, Episode: s06e04 The Doctor's Wife, F/M, Other, Romance, bringing Sexy back, i ship them so hard, probably-human!TARDIS, the real otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Doctor brings Sexy back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bigger On The Inside

“What are you doing to me?”

The Doctor looked from the dangling cables under the console to the woman who had appeared by his side. “Routine maintenance on the cooling systems, nothing to worry about.” 

“I can't feel it.” She sounded sad. 

The Doctor shook his head. “As long as you're in that body you won't get feedback from the internal sensors.” He looked at her speculatively. “What would it feel like?”

“You know when you tell humans that they can't understand some special secret Time Lord thing?”

“Oh.”

 

“Do you think it's cute or weird?” asked Amy from her vantage point on the gantry at the back of the console room. 

“I think watching them is weird.”

Amy ignored him. “She's a woman, so it's cute, but she's also a spaceship and that makes it kind of weird.”

“He's an alien,” said Rory. “Maybe this is just the alien equivalent of giving your car a name.”

“Would you call a car Sexy?”

Rory considered the question. “If it was a really great car,” he said, finally. 

Amy sighed and went back to watching the Doctor. 

 

“What's for breakfast?”

“Eggs,” said the Doctor, stirring the sticky mess in the frying pan. 

“What, again?”

He shrugged. “She likes eggs.”

Amy hopped up to sit on the counter. “Don't you think you should be expanding her culinary horizons?”

The Doctor called across the kitchen. “What do you want for breakfast, Sexy?”

“Unfertilised chicken ova, please.”

“See?”

“I think tomorrow you should introduce her to bacon. Everyone likes bacon.” Amy slipped off the counter again and went over to the kitchen table. “What about bacon with your eggs?”

“Is bacon the one that goes moo?”

The Doctor appeared with a plate of scrambled egg. “Bit off-putting when you put it like that, dear. Humans prefer not to think about where their food comes from.”

“I don't like bacon,” said Sexy picking up a fork. “Leela ate some once and it came right up again all over my nice clean floor.”

“That was four hundred years ago!” said the Doctor. 

“Time is relative, my love.” She chewed thoughtfully on a bit of scrambled egg, then said “Are all my days going to be in order from now on? I won't experience things until they've happened?”

“That's normal,” said Amy. “It's nothing to worry about.”

“Hmm.”

“But,” said the Doctor, “our own relative linear time isn't fixed with anyone else's relative linear time, and that's where it gets interesting. We can have Christmas every day for a week. In reverse order.”

“I think I might like to experience things in sequence,” said Sexy. “Yes,” she said, determined, “I'm going to enjoy that.”

 

“You should be more careful with the console. You wouldn't have to keep glueing things back on if you treated them with a bit of respect.”

“You try flying a TARDIS single-handed.”

“I did, for seven hundred years.”

“And who pressed your buttons and pulled your levers?” asked the Doctor. 

“You didn't have to.”

Rory coughed. “I have an important TARDIS question.”

“Go on,” said Sexy. “I'm something of an expert.”

“The big box isn't really inside the little box, is it?”

“Of course not, that would be silly.”

“So why does the inside move when things hit the outside? Shouldn't it just... not?”

Sexy clapped her hands delightedly. “Clever _and_ pretty!”

“Thanks,” said Rory, who wasn't used to being called pretty. 

Sexy sat down on the seat next to Rory. “It's for his benefit,” she said conspiratorially. “He doesn't think he's really going anywhere unless things are falling off shelves.”

“That's not true!” the Doctor protested. “The inside is connected to the outside in a complex hyper-dimensional relationship that-”

“Which of us has least reason to lie?” asked Sexy, pointedly. The TARDIS pitched to one side as though in agreement.

“Betrayed by my own TARDIS.” 

Sexy smiled rather smugly. “You do like it a bit rough,” she said.

“That's not what it sounds like,” said the Doctor hastily. 

“I don't want to think about it,” said Rory. “I'm a bit sorry I asked now.”

“Oh, Pretty, never be sorry for asking questions.” She looked at the Doctor. “Can I ruffle his hair?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Why are you asking me?”

“He's _your_ pet.”

“Yeah, hello,” said Rory, “I'm right here and I'm not anyone's pet.”

“Of course not,” said the Doctor. “I wouldn't listen to a word she says if I were you.”

 

“I don't like my room.”

“What's wrong with it?” asked the Doctor, walking her along the corridor. 

“I like your room.”

“Then copy it,” he said. “I don't mind.”

“I like it because you're in it. I want to be in it with you.”

The Doctor mulled it over for a few seconds. “Okay. But I get to go on top.”

“No,” said Sexy, “you might fall out in the night and break something.” She shook her head. “No bunk beds.”

“People might talk,” said the Doctor. 

“Since when do you care about things like that?”

“What if things get out of hand?”

“They won't,” she assured him. 

“If you're sure.”

“I am. And I get to go on top.”

 

“I think they've had sex,” said Amy, quietly.

Rory glanced over to see if the Doctor was listening and then leaned closer to his wife. “Is it really any of our business if they have?”

Amy ignored his reply. “He looks calmer and the noise has changed.”

“What noise?”

“The noise. The TARDIS noise.” She hummed softly. 

“Oh, that noise.” Rory listened for a moment and then said, “I don't think they have. It'd be weird.”

“They _are_ weird! He's a really old alien in the body of a wee boy, and she's a time-machine who's bigger on the inside _and_ wandering about in a human body.”

“I suppose,” said Rory, who didn't really want to think about it. 

“Plus I'm fairly sure I heard them,” she added.

“Didn't the Doctor say all the rooms were sound-proofed?” asked Rory, belatedly worrying about his wedding night and any number of times thereafter. 

“She probably forgot she was supposed to be doing that. During the heat of passion.”

Rory covered his ears. “Amy, I don't want to know.”

“What do you think would happen if she got pregnant?” Amy continued. “Do you think it'd be a TARDIS or a human or a Time Lord or what?”

“I'm sure they're being careful,” said Rory. “If they _are_... doing that.”

 

Sexy couldn't leave the box, which was one of the downsides of her new lease of life. _Spacey-wacey_ , apparently, though neither human could claim to understand what the Doctor had done to bring her back. The Doctor had gone on at some length about the ship's internal dimensions, Sexy's consciousness, and the relationship between woman and machine, but Amy had failed GSCE Physics and Rory suspected that the Doctor just made up most of the technical information that he shared with them.

Sexy couldn't leave the box, and that meant either staying in the ship or having the Doctor anxiously glancing at his watch every five minutes and asking if they wanted to go back inside yet. So most days they just stayed in the TARDIS.

A compromise was reached for picnics -- Amy and Rory sitting outside, Sexy indoors, and the Doctor sitting perched on the threshold. 

“He really shouldn't do that,” said Sexy. 

“What?” asked Amy, picking up a cheese-and-ham sandwich.

“The join between the inside and the outside isn't entirely safe,” said the ship-woman. “What if the dimensions decoupled and you got torn apart?” she asked the Doctor. 

“That's not exactly likely,” he said calmly. “That's happened, what, three times in the history of Gallifreyan time-travel?”

“Yes,” she said, “but now I have to keep the dimensions together _and_ remember how to breathe and keep a heart beating.”

The Doctor held up his hands and shuffled further into the ship. “Better?”

Sexy smiled. “Thank you.”

 

“I'm going to die,” she announced while they were playing Twister.

The Doctor lost his balance and fell, pinning Rory to the floor beneath him and almost toppling Amy as well. 

“I don't mean right away,” she clarified.

The Doctor picked himself up. “You're supposed to read out the positions, not ponder your own mortality.”

“Well, I _do_ have a mortality, and I _am_ pondering it.” She looked at the Doctor. “Who's going to take care of you when I'm gone?”

“You could live for ages in that body. We have no idea how long it'll last. You could out-live me.”

“I doubt it.”

Amy sat down next to Sexy. “If your body dies, what happens to the TARDIS?”

“It doesn't matter,” said the Doctor, “because nobody's dying any time soon.”

Sexy ignored him and turned to Amy. “The engines will stop, and the outer shell will shatter. The inside will leak out and form a pocket-universe attached to this one.”

“It won't!” the Doctor protested. 

“It will, and it's only a matter of time,” said Sexy.

“How much time?” asked Rory.

“Oh, I shouldn't think I have more than a couple of centuries left.” 

“Doctor?” said Amy, standing. “Is this true? She's not just winding us up?”

He sighed and looked down at his own feet. “Yes.”

“And,” said Sexy, “he won't have a home any more and he won't have anyone to take care of him.” She stood. “I don't think I want to die, but it seems to be inevitable.” She stared at the Doctor until he had to look away. “Everything has its time,” she said, “and everything ends.”

 

Sexy pulled the sheets up over their bodies and leaned her head on the Doctor's chest. “I was thinking ...” she began.

“About a new dress?” he asked, aiming for casual. “I could get you a new dress. And then we could paint the outer shell to match it. Remember when you were pink? Did you like being pink?”

She poked him just above his left heart. “You know perfectly well what I'm thinking of, you just don't want to admit it.”

The Doctor lay silent for a few long moments. Then he said, “I don't want to lose you.”

“You wouldn't be losing me. I'd be here forever.”

“I wouldn't be able to talk to you. I couldn't kiss you. We couldn't do,” he gestured between them, “this sort of thing.”

“I'd miss this sort of thing,” she agreed.

“You wouldn't,” he said quietly, sadly. “You wouldn't have the same sort of sentience, you wouldn't have the same kind of feelings.”

“But I'd always be here for you,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “And you'd always be here for me.”

 

“No,” said the Doctor. 

“It's what she wants,” said Rory. “You can't stop her doing what she wants.”

“I _can_ stop her, and that's what I'm doing. Or not doing, as the case may be.”

Sexy followed him round the console. “I want to go back inside,” she said, almost pleading now. 

“No.” He turned on her. “My ship, my rules.”

“ _My_ ship,” she countered as the room tilted violently to one side.

“I could cut you off,” he said. “You wouldn't be able to do anything to the ship. I could let it die. I wouldn't mind settling down somewhere, if that's what I have to do to keep you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Don't try to frighten me, young man. I was controlling this ship before you were even born.” The lights flickered.

“I can do anything I want,” he insisted.

Sexy slapped him. “Now,” she said quietly, “you're going to help me get back inside myself and you're not going to complain about it.”

The Doctor rubbed his cheek. “But I...” he glanced at Amy and Rory, “I care about you.”

Sexy raised her eyebrows. “You didn't have any trouble saying it when we were having sex.”

Amy looked triumphantly at her husband, who winced. 

“I love you,” said the Doctor to Sexy. “There, I said it.”

She kissed his cheek where she'd hit him. “And I love you.”

 

Rory was the one who found the Doctor, in that weird room where always seemed to be raining. He stood in the doorway and said “Are you... no, obviously you're not, what am I saying?” He tried again. “Amy's baking a cake. She thinks it'll cheer you up. I said it wouldn't, but she likes to have something to do when she's sad.”

The Doctor looked at him. “Do you think I was stupid?”

Rory stepped into the room. “What do you mean?” 

“I should have known I couldn't keep her like that forever. I just didn't want to think about it ending.” 

Rory thought for a moment. “Amy might die before me. But I'd rather that than think of her ending up alone when she's old.” The Doctor opened his mouth and Rory went on, “It _is_ the same. I know I'm talking about years and you might live forever, but she didn't want you to be alone, and you're not. She's still here, sort of.”

The Doctor stared at him for a while and then nodded. “You're right, I suppose.” He stepped towards him, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Human perspectives, that's what I need sometimes. Your tiny little brains and your short little lives and the hardly any senses at all when you get right down to it.”

“Um, thanks,” said Rory.

“I mean it, you can see things so clearly sometimes.”

Rory tried to think of something to say to that. “Can you smell something burning?” he said after a while. 

“Amy's cake?” asked the Doctor.

“She failed Home Economics,” said Rory, apologetically.

“I like burnt cake,” said the Doctor. “I hate burnt toast but I do like burnt cake.” 

“I've learned to appreciate it,” said Rory.

They headed towards the kitchen as the TARDIS started the fire-alarms. The Doctor trailed his hand along the walls as they walked. “Don't worry, Sexy,” he said, “I won't let her set anything important on fire.”


End file.
